MikeNoLastName - 9:36 pm on May 2, 2007 (gmt 0)

I think it sucks, if it's indeed true!
I came in to the forum today to post and ask about seeing tons of ads on my site lately which do not even remotely match those showing up in the Google Adsense Preview Tool and realized this is probably the same issue! I just realized at least half of the ads I was seeing related to old topics I was interested in LAST MONTH.

1. It makes the above mentioned Tool virtually useless.
2. Since I've been noticing it over the last couple months our earnings have dropped precipitously.

It might be useful for generic sites where the best ads available are generic ebay ads and other bottom feeders, but on narrowly targeted sites with high ad competition for high paying terms, just the shot-gun type testing of these 'customer targeted' ads (to test if they 'pay off') can take a major, major toll!
So what if Last week I (or a family member) did a one-time emergency search for a friend about golden retriever illness symptoms, why should I be plastered with ads about pet products for the rest of my life when I don't even have a pet? I'd rather see all the available ads about what I'm searching for here and NOW, not be distracted by something I may once have looked for and be done with! Don't they know enough from their own employees to know that internet users are not the same as couch potato TV watchers and are highly target oriented?
Maybe this is why the adsense optimization report for this and last month emphasize adding more ad units per page, so they can TEST this cr@p.

>>"Google suggest that publishers will always display the ads that will yield the best for them"
This may be all well and good IN THEORY, butthe problem is, as I've noticed in the past (for instance in the case of low paying site targetted ads which defy this theory) it takes a certain period of experimentation by G on your site to determine if those ads will indeed pay off, before they can be compared CPM to CPM with other ads. Guess who feels the impact of that?

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 9:47 pm (utc) on May 2, 2007]